In order for a printing device to produce quality image prints, the printing device is calibrated to operate at an ideal level for producing consistent output by using the standard or generic color profile provided with the printing device which may work for various types of print media. Although the generic color profile output may be acceptable, it may not produce the best or highest quality image on each type of print media.
One problem can occur is that various print media types may produce image color shift due to the effect of the media properties such as the weight, brightness, whiteness, color, coating, direction of grains, texture, etc. For example, resulting image may appear reddish, yellowish, or more on blue on various print media because the generic color profile does not take into account the specific printing workflow and the printing device setup for the print media. This can be the case for example, if the user designates the paper tray and a color profile, which may not be suitable for the media in the paper tray.
In order to achieve the best quality print image for a designated print media, a correct color profile must be used or created corresponding to the designated media in the printing device. However, the process of assigning and selecting the correct color profile to a designated media can be guesswork. For example, the associated media properties (or attributes) must match the media properties defined for a color profile. For example, the color profile (i.e., “Flyer 1”) may be specifically made for a specific printing device and for a specific print media and/or properties of the specific media. The properties or attributes of the print media can include, for example, weight, brightness, whiteness, color, and coating. If any of these variables change, a print image printed by a printer may not produce the best or optimal expected result.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system that analyzes the designated print media which best suits a color profile, and which uses the color profile to automatically determine the best suited or type of print media which can relatively easily deliver printed color results that are highly accurate and desired by the consumer.
In addition, in today's implementations, a color profile used in calibrating the image forming apparatus, printer, or multi-functional peripheral (MFP) can be developed or designed for a very specific paper media (or print media). The reason being that each paper media (or print media) may have a unique paper characteristic, for example the level of “whiteness” of the paper. Due to this unique paper characteristic, a color profile specific to the whiteness of the paper needs to be created.
However, the problem with today's implementation is that in many cases, the paper (or print media) on the tray is “NOT” the paper that was used to create the color profile. In addition, there may be no association between the paper on the tray with the paper used in creating the color profile.
It would be desirable to ensure that the paper or print media that is currently on the tray is the same paper that the printer or MFP is trying to associate with the color profile. For example, if the printer or MFP runs a calibration job with a set paper in Feeder Tray 1, if the user opens the Feeder Tray 1 and manually changes the paper to a different media type, known systems and methods cannot ensure that the correct or proper paper media or print media is housed within the feeder tray of the printer or MFP.